Just as a man loves his wife, he begins to love this drug.
Right next to Reay Road, a railway station in Mumbai, India, is a stone-walled shack where a group of men sit huddled together. A mist of smoke rises above then, and the men’s faces grow visibly anxious as they begin to take in bittersweet smell. The men take turns chasing the smoke rising up from the deep red resin of the opium poppy as it slowly trickles from one end of the foil to the other.
“Just as a man loves his wife, he begins to love this drug,” says Aneja, a twenty-eight year old drug user and taxi driver. His friend, in a stupor, hangs lifelessly next to him. The flame on the match Aneja was holding had already reached his fingertips, but he continued, “This is a horrible thing, but, without it, a man’s mind stops working.”
In this small shack, everyone is forthcoming about how opioid addiction has ruined their lives. It was a moment of dissonance to witness a discussion resembling a counseling session alongside drug use. “We can only go without it for twenty four hours and then our whole bodies become weak. One goes crazy without this,” says Paresh, another user in the room.
Drug addiction debilitates individuals physically, mentally, and financially. But it has a far-reaching societal impact, especially in Mumbai, a city with over 38,000 intravenous drug users (IDUs) alone, according to a 2006 study published in Sexually Transmitted Infections.
A walk near the Mumbai Central railway station revealed how addicts and young intravenous drug users (IDUs), desperate for their next fix, will even turn on their own mothers to extract money. The familial impact of drug addiction is devastating when harassment and verbal abuse turn into physical violence. “Most men begin committing crimes to pay for their drugs. Maybe 10% of addicts actually work real jobs,” says Paresh.
Once abandoned by their families, addicts resort to petty crime and theft as an everyday means to pay for drugs. When police catch them using or recognize a user, they beat them and extort money. One man in the shack claimed that the police beat him so badly because he could not pay a bribe that he had to be hospitalized after his leg had been broken in several places. Drug use is his natural way to deal with the recurring infection on his foot.
Hearing this, Sanjay speaks up about the lack of support for addicts and criticizes local NGOs for profiting from the funding they receive. In this room strewn with matches and garbage, Sanjay’s presence would make anyone do a double-take. Clean-shaven and dressed in a crisp shirt, he stands in stark contrast to the unkempt men beside him. He shows me a copy of his diploma from Bombay University, and tells me about his business. Sanjay is quick to point out that he is a recreational user, but he comes to this shack at least once a week. But he is living proof that drug use is a type of equalizer, reducing a successful entrepreneur to one of the most marginalized groups in society.
He explains how twenty to twenty-five users are paid off by NGOs to come and discuss the benefits of the NGO’s services (they did not actually receive) when funding agencies visit. The lack of follow-up at the NGOs absolves them of having to spend more resources on relieving users of their addiction. He claims that some NGOs that receive free needles from a government needle exchange program actually sell those needles. If proven true, this would implicate NGOs in defrauding the government and funders in addition to taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of addicts.
The destruction of the family unit, police brutality, and corruption in NGOs are not only major societal impacts of drug addiction but also reify the drug problem. Transparency International ranked India 85th in its 2008 corruption perception index, with police perceived as being the most corrupt all over the world. NGOs and rehabilitation centers can play an enormous role in curbing the societal impact of addiction, but funding agencies should develop novel monitoring strategies to prevent the wastage of resources. Media campaigns exposing police brutality may help empower marginalized victims to come forward. However, solutions to these problems are by no means hard and fast and will require considerable momentum from the public.